As environmentally friendly vehicles, electrically powered vehicles have been drawing attention in recent years, such as electric vehicles, hybrid vehicles, and fuel cell vehicles. Each of these electrically powered vehicles has a motor for generating driving power for traveling, and a power storage device for storing electric power supplied to the motor. A hybrid vehicle refers to a vehicle having a motor and an internal combustion engine as motive power sources. A fuel cell vehicle refers to a vehicle having a fuel cell as a direct-current power source for driving the vehicle.
For such an electrically powered vehicle, a technique is proposed to charge the power storage device for driving the vehicle, by means of a commercial power source having high power generation efficiency. Particularly drawing attention is a technique of charging a power storage device mounted on an electrically powered vehicle, using a source of commercial electric power supplied to general houses (for example, a source of supplying a relatively low voltage of 100 V or 200 V).
As a charging system for such an electrically powered vehicle, SAE Electric Vehicle Conductive Charge Coupler (NPL 1) provides standard specifications for a vehicular inlet and a charging connector to facilitate shared usage of a charging cable and a connector among different vehicles.